Edit: The recording of this session is now available here
This coming Tuesday, April 19th 2016, at 09:00 PDT (17:00 UTC) I will be joining the VIRL team for a discussion and demo of using cloud hosted servers, VIRL, and INE material for CCIE preparation, with a focus on large topologies (30+ devices). The Webex signup link is here. The session will also be simulcast on live.ine.com.
Specifically in this session I will be covering:
- How to deploy VIRL on cloud servers
- Loading INE topology files into the VIRL cloud instance through GIT
- Launching and managing multiple large topologies
Attendees will also have an opportunity to submit questions to me as well as the VIRL team.
Hope to see you there!

About Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13:
Brian McGahan was one of the youngest engineers in the world to obtain the CCIE, having achieved his first CCIE in Routing & Switching at the age of 20 in 2002. Brian has been teaching and developing CCIE training courses for over 10 years, and has assisted thousands of engineers in obtaining their CCIE certification. When not teaching or developing new products Brian consults with large ISPs and enterprise customers in the midwest region of the United States.
Find all posts by Brian McGahan, CCIE #8593, CCDE #2013::13 | Visit Website
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am i gonna need this if im preparing for CCIE datacentert ?
NX-OSv is supported, but the features are limited. Most CCIE DC preparation still requires physical equipment.
Is it possible to use VIRL to prepare for CCIE SRCURITY ?
Thank you
Yes, but not for all platforms. You can do all IOS related security, some Catalyst IOS security, some ASA firewall security, and the import additional virtual machines such as ACS and ISE servers to interact with the virtual topology.
It will be nice to have this demo deployment perform from a Mac…
The source of the deployment doesn’t matter, because it runs inside a virtual machine jumphost. I’ll be demoing it from windows but the steps would be the same.
Planning to buy Physical Hardwares for ccie r/s but VIRL looks good .Which path to choose ?
I’ll be talking about this in the session, using VIRL vs. the alternatives
Will the session be recorded so we can view it on demand?
Yes it’ll be added to the streaming.ine.com library
Brian,
Will this be available for either download or All Access Pass?
It will be free to stream afterwards.
Hello Brian,
Can I still subscribe?
Yes, the webex link is here. You can also see it via http://live.ine.com
Just tried to sign up and it says event is no longer active???
Try this link
Is it possible to use VIRL to prepare for CCIE Collaboration ?
Yes, you can integrate it with additional VMs such as CUCM, Unity, etc.
Brian,
Is it available to stream? I missed it.
Not yet but it will be shortly. I’ll post the link to the recording once it’s ready.
Hi Brian,
I tried loading the SPv4 (14 nodes) topology in VIRL, but it said it needs 43G of memory.
In this 14 node topology, there are 10 CSR1000v and 4XR.
Can I replace CSR1000v with IOSv? or is there a way to tweak the mem requirement:
IOSv = 1vCPU, 512Mb
IOS XRv = 1vCPU, 1536Mb
CSR1000v = 1vCPU, 3096Mb <<<< require the most memory
NXOSv = 1vCPU, 2048Mb
You can replace it with IOSv for most tasks. There are some SP specific features that regular IOS doesn’t support, but when you get to that point you can just selectively replace a few IOSv instances with CSR1000v. The other option, if you’re using packet.net, is to use their “baremetal_3″ server which has more RAM.
Thanks much. It would really help to know which routers should be kept as CSR1000v. I am connecting the routers directly (w/o the unmanaged switch, my free Maestro from work doesn’t support it), and the interfaces are different, so it’d save time to know this ahead of time.
That’s really up to you depending on what your server resources are. In the INE-VIRL git topologies I have all the devices as IOSv, and the configurations are changed to match that in the number convention.
Hi Brian,
We saw in your Webinar, that you were able to Telnet to all the devices. We did configure SecureCRT as our external terminal and we are able to Telent/SSH to single devices, however Telnet to all devices just don’t work for us.
Can you please share the detailed configuration steps.
thanks.
Hi Pashy,
Try posting on the VIRL support forum at http://community.dev-innovate.com/
Hi!,
What kind of hardware requirements do i need in order to get a complete CCIE lab with VIRL??? is VIRL a best way than rack rental with tokens?
If you want to run it on your own machine, 32GB RAM for an IOSv based topology, probably about 64GB RAM for a CSR1000v based topology.